I Crushed My Heart In San Francisco

Suffering has little to do with wins and losses when it comes to sports. Rather, sports failures and mediocrities hurt in those moments when their style and manner sums up the frustrations and insecurities of the city itself, as is the case with my hometown team, the San Francisco Giants. Owners of seven World Series titles, but none since 1954, their shortcomings from April to November map perfectly onto the difficulties of living in the City by the Bay.

So much of San Franciscans' love for their city comes from what it used to have, which in turn creates a culture of waiting. We want Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg back at City Lights bookstore and Vesuvio bar on Broadway and Columbus in the same way we're waiting for the next Hitchcock to stylize the city.

Adding to the frustration: Those artists and their works are the result of transplanted and already established genius. What you're left with is the sinking feeling that movements like Beats started in Greenwich Village, but moved to San Francisco for the weather.

Willie Mays, the Giants' greatest player, has streets and statues dedicated to him across the city of San Francisco, but he was already an MVP and World Series winner with the New York Giants before he came to the Bay area. Barry Bonds, Mays' godson, who came up in San Francisco, was our great hope--that explains our unconditional support through the steroids scandal.

We badly need him to be the greatest; yet before he was tainted, his surliness, entitlement and ambivalence to his supporters was already at odds with what San Francisco fans wanted from him, leading my father to utter the most soul-crushing phrase one can say to a fourteen-year-old baseball fan: "You'll never care about Barry Bonds the way I cared about Willie Mays."

It would be easier for Giants fans if the club had left Boston or Baltimore or any East Coast city, other than New York. The rivalry between San Francisco and Los Angeles isn't serious because we don't take them seriously. The only city San Francisco really compares itself with is New York, in part because there are so many New York expats in San Francisco, but mostly because they're the nation's two most cosmopolitan cities.

For Giants baseball fans, it matters less that we haven't won a World Series since 1954 than it does that the last title was won in New York. We'd gladly take a 70-year drought if it meant a San Francisco win.

And that's because suffering--to a San Francisco fan--has nothing to do with how long it's been since the home team won a World Series. In part, this comes valuing innovative flair and boldness over conventional style. No Giants fan would ever have traded the impossibly high-kicking, brawling Juan Marichal for the combo of Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, just like no San Francisco surfer who grows up with icy water and thick, juicy waves that break irregularly over rocks would ever surf the warm, predicable, crowded waters of Southern California.

We also, admittedly, don't care about sports the way East Coast and Midwestern fans do. If the Philadelphia Phillies or Cleveland Indians miss the playoffs, then--wham!--it's back to reality in the rust belt with nothing on TV. Giants fans sigh and head to Napa for the weekend.

The joy of sports is that their perceived importance moves wildly out of step with their actual importance, which turns fans into fanatics and causes cities to waste hundreds of millions of dollars on new stadium deals that economists consistently show contribute less to a city than a local supermarket.

In San Francisco, the only sound economic decision local government seems capable of making is not being held ransom by local teams for exorbitant stadium costs. The city council would rather cover City Hall in gold leaf than put up the cash to keep the Giants from moving to Tampa (almost happened), and they're currently allowing the 49ers to move to Santa Clara--roughly equivalent to New York's Jets or Giants leaving for Connecticut--instead of paying $300 million for a new stadium that will operate five hours a day, eight days a year.

And that's ultimately the frustration of being a Giants fan--or San Francisco sports fan in general: constantly being reminded that sports aren't very significant in the grand scheme of things. It's an important lesson, and a good one, but it takes away the irrational joy felt in so many other cities when the home team wins.

When the Giants win, it's a baseball team that wins. When teams in other cities win, it's a metaphysical victory for the city. It'd be nice to have that delusion every once and a while.